


The meeting place of love and hunger.

by Stickywhiskers



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Hyuuga Neji Lives, Inappropriate use of the Byakugan, Liberties have been taken, Masturbation, Mild blood/violence, Puberty, Sexuality, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:21:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22158505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stickywhiskers/pseuds/Stickywhiskers
Summary: Not even the crushing weight of clan tradition and decorum could stop Neji watching her as she whirled like a deadly dervish. She danced and he dilated, his whole body one raw nerve.
Relationships: Hyuuga Neji/Tenten
Comments: 9
Kudos: 50





	The meeting place of love and hunger.

“My passions, concentrated on a single point, resemble the rays of a sun assembled by a magnifying glass; they immediately set fire to whatever object they find in their way”- de Sade 

Although in appearance he carried the stoic and pale untouchability passed to him by blood; in the very gossamer fabric of his genes, expressed for all to see in the mirror of his moon-calf gaze; Neji was a deeply romantic man.

Born two weeks early, to a fine-boned bird like woman who was his father’s cousin, he came into the world silent and purple, mouth and nose clogged with the usual viscera of birth, he was wrapped and taken by his grandfather, to be examined, unclogged and cloistered away in the airy halls of the main branch until his mother either stemmed the flow of her life-blood or did the clan a favour and died quietly. 

Choosing the later was probably the only free decision Nejis mother ever made, so Hizashis hand in clammy grip, she passed out of life with surprizing elegance, leaving a saddened but not devastated husband, now widower, and a small rapidly inflating new-born. 

And if it never entered Nejis mind to earnestly question the who or whys of his mother, well it was probably due to an overabundance of pubescent angst directed at his uncle, clan, cousins, deceased father, and fate. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As a babe Neji had a huge appetite, wet nurses complained of his sharp nails, scratching their chests, scraping the bridge of his own nose, and startling himself awake at the pain. He did not rest easy, he was soothed only in the arms of his father, who cradled him with the tentative nervousness of one unused to children. The wet nurses would tut, and admonish, for didn’t the son (even the second son), of the clan leader have better things to do than babysit? 

The compound of his childhood was a labyrinth of smooth shoji, sliding silently in their tracks, wooden hallways that were a warren for the little rabbit children of the clan, who were tucked strategically in the centre of the family rooms, surrounded on all sides by the protective gentle fists of aunts, uncles and cousins. Here Neji developed his early taste for aesthetics; the cream of the walls, translucent rice paper so fine that the lucent dusk of the outside world cast the suggestion of pantomime shadows on the wall of his room, he noticed early on that his eyes rested more easily within the monochromatic walls of his family compound, and so he grew to prefer the subdued browns and pale greys of his little world.

He saw his father daily, led in the first fumbling movements of a dance, a game that was the beginning of the gentle fist style. With all the seriousness of a small child with a dead mother, and a family full of emotionally unavailable adults who were employed by the government to kill, Neji would watch the men and women of his clan rock on the balls of their feet, slide onto their toes, move their wrists just so and push and pull against an invisible enemy and he would feel the uncontrollable jolts of one who knows they must sit and watch, and must be quiet.

Neji grew up watching his father, then watching his father’s chakra system, a tiny river within, with eddies and flows and a current so perfectly balanced within the body of one man that Neji could hardly believe it was real. He would turn his byakugan upon himself, and watch his own hands, see the thrum of his own river of life and wonder at the microcosm of power that wrapped comfortingly around his veins and seemed unstoppable. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Then came the academy, and the other children did not have pale eyes, and could not see the divinity made flesh within themselves. 

And he was called blind.

But his world was expanding rapidly, in every direction his gaze grew, inch by agonising inch, like exercising a newly discovered muscle, he sought to stretch his perception, One day seeing in glorious detail the face of the student sitting directly behind him, then pushing himself through the bones of her face, through flesh and cavity, past her river of chakra, (with a murmur of apology), lapping at the back of her cranial vault, he was forced to linger here in his limitations for a few weeks. In which when one small tan skinned girl leaned on his desk and asked him just why he looked so twisted up like a ginger root, and didn’t he know it was rude to stare?

He told the girl with the lopsided buns and dirty face that he wasn’t staring, staring meant not blinking and he was blinking.

Blink. See?

He was in-fact stuck in the back of a particularly thick-headed student, and would she stop interrupting his training. She picked her nails with a shortened senbon and laughed at him, telling him the veins around his eyes reminded her of something. Neji got the distinct feeling he was being made fun of as Iruka sensei yelled at Tenten to get back to her desk and for Neji to respect the classrooms rules on Bloodline trait activation. 

And as he soured in disposition, death and silence raining supreme in his household, experiencing the branding of his flesh like cattle, and the invasion the seal placed on his previously untouched chakra system, Neji retreated into the darkened den of his byakugan as a wounded animal would to lick its sores. 

Until all moist earth and nauseating turmoil within his own body began to change, and he watched his own growth from the inside out. Bones lengthened, and chakra tunnels stretched and reaching out to encircle the new tissue. Unlike the other academy students who became trapped in the headlit horror of their own hormonal transformation, Neji watched puberty from inside a black and white topography. His voice deepened and he watched the bones in his chest expand and thicken, intercostal muscles weaving between his ribs, a closed system around his nipples where in his female classmates he saw blossoming complexity.

And it was in this way that Neji became a creature of sensuality. 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It is often speculated (and to be fair documented), that in the genin teams of three, (good number thought Neji, one for each ascended eye) the female is prone to falling in love, to bringing humility, delicacy, vulnerability and the first stirrings of sexuality. 

Team Guy did not function as such.

Tenten, the dirty faced, senbon wielder that saw a little too much for somebody without a doujutsu was carefree, and as out of body as Neji was obsessed by the workings of the flesh. She stayed out of reach of both Lee and Neji, and he watched her deliberately steel herself every time Guy gripped her in a bone crushing hug of teacherly, fatherly support. She did not care for feel, she wore cheap fabrics, and clothes that were ill fitting, riding up her back as she bent over, and creeping over her belly when she raised her arms. She was perpetually covered in cuts, bruises, dirt, blood and sweat. She ate until her stomach cramped and didn’t care if she drew the eyes, admiring or otherwise of the other genin. 

Neji loved watching her most of all.

In telescopic detail, he could see the taught muscle of her calves as she balanced on her toes to reach that ugly fucking cat they had spent the better part of a muggy afternoon coaxing out of a tree. Simultaneously he could watch her pink bottom lip slip into her mouth, teeth dragging over its lined surface only to reappear, moistened and plump. He could watch, and he did.  
It was an unspoken rule of the Hyuuga that the byakugan was not a tool of frivolity, and that to pass ones all seeing gaze over another was tantamount to passing a hand over them, as such, respect and restraint was to be employed in its usage with allies and precise devastation for enemies. Neji knew this, knew that to use the byakugan, to push and pull his very being manifest into activation was of the sacred, but he could not help himself tumble into the profane earthly world of desire.

As his eyes required not only increased chakra delivery for byakugan activation, but also increased blood flow, the arteries and returning venous flow that pulsed a steady beat at his temples mirrored that of the endless irritating throb in his groin. To watch himself become erect, chakra and blood driven by warring needs to opposite ends of his body was a heady rush.  
To see the whirlpools of his chakra change without manipulation, part and divide, recede and flow as if on the tides of a tempest increased his arousal even more. He could see the illumination that intangible substance provided and wondered that it didn’t shine through his pale skin for all to see. As his hand gripped tightly around his cock, he marvelled at the swelling of particular chakra points, wells of energy that controlled flow and thrummed a pulse like little beacons in the body. When he climaxed, his body lit up in such a glow that he was momentarily blinded, followed instantly by briefly losing consciousness at the dual strain of blood, chakra, and fluid loss. 

And as in everything, Neji began to extrapolate from his experimentation that a similar display must occur in every being at the moment of relief, a flood of light-sans combustion, in the tomb of the body, the river that runs deep churned into such a rage that the heat of passion itself flares into a self-sustaining reaction. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In the hazy aftermath of war, the great war in which under heavy illusion all shinobi fell, where it seemed the simple art of the ninja had become the staged battleground of gods and freaks. Neji awoke after being presumed and possibly truly dead, in the steely arms of Lee, and once again a hole burned through his chest, in an antiseptic haze of medics and healing chakra he wished he had enough energy to look inside himself at the craggy edges of his own collapsed rivers, the broken dam around his heart that now was held back under tenuous construction of Sakuras talent and will.

Dragged unceremoniously to lie in the mud with other half alive allies, he watched Tenten; as unable to lift his hands to wipe the blood that trickled from the sticky corners of his mouth as she was unbothered by the red tide that soaked into her clothes. It was not her blood she flicked from the end of her katana, her eyes focused on some distant point, but it was probably her blood that stained her gums and teeth, her grin in the face of a dying enemy was the crazed gash of an oni mask or a wolfs maw. Neji watched and realised this small spectre of lithe death was his best friend. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After all this, when the village began the tentative task of piecing back together what was lost, in a thankfully balmy spring, where most kunai had been exchanged for hammers and nails and the Hokages office doubled as a default barracks for all the shinobi forfeiting their bombed out homes as temporary shelters for civilians, a caravan came to town.

Heady clouds of perfume seemed to thicken the air around the mobile dwellings, heralded by the tinkling of chimes and bells that dangled merrily from awnings, thin wooden wheels as tall as a man flanked the sides of homes shaped like boats and beasts and all swayed as if on the water as they were pulled by dusty mares to the gates of Konoha. 

Under strict instructions to gather what they needed, trade what they could and then move on, the travellers set up a camp on the outskirts of what had been the south side of the city with impressive speed. The men and women were darker skinned than most in the village, their children ran around with black braids that trailed in the dust, often woven with scraps of silk or pieces of animal pelts and bone. They carried no ninja tools but were able to repair anything given to them, steel and copper pans on their portable forges, and clay kilns painted with birds and twisted flowers. In the evenings they gathered outside their train of houses and ate communally, from a large brass pot they feasted on fragrant stews, the mothers and older children feeding the younger, while wiry looking dogs prowled at their master’s feet for scraps.

With age and power, Nejis circle of divination grew and he could see all of this without leaving the shelter of the mostly preserved Hyuuga compound. He could lie in bed and still watch as the plump women chatted in guttural tones while sewing patches of padded wool onto quilted jackets, he could watch the unshaven men wipe sweat from their brows and barter with the villagers brave enough to wander into the camp. And he could see Tenten, frog clasps and tang tops with high collars not at all out of place as she laughed with the grubby children and showed off her balancing skills with a blade.

Maybe this was where she came from, these nomads from the north, her complexion and cat like eyes were certainly visible among the travellers, some of the smaller girls even wore their hair in braided twin buns, and although the colours, bright pinks, mustards and maroons that made up the canopy’s of the caravans caused Nejis eyes to ache, he could see the delight in his teammates eyes as she soaked up the vibrancy.

As weeks passed and the travelling folk got ready to move onwards, the leader, a leggy man in his forties who walked with an exaggerated roll to his hips that Neji couldn’t help but find erotic, asked the Hokage for the protection of two ninja as they moved southward on their way through a mountain pass. Although they wouldn’t pay in coin, they offered bags of finely forged nails, brackets, buckets, a casket of spiced wine, and a pile of good quality sheepskins. Naruto didn’t hesitate and assigned Tenten and Neji to chaperone the motley tribe on the fortnight long journey.

It was on this mission that a nineteen-year-old Neji asked Tenten masturbate in-front of him, without preamble, or any romantic gesture at all. 

He was sitting, holed up in one of the caravans offered to them for the duration of the journey, they were meant to be going over their maps of the terrain, anticipating any potential dangers of detours caused by the recent spring rains, but in the quiet of the evening after a weary day of dusty travel and glorified babysitting she had been methodically re-wrapping the hilt of her dirk (preferred weapon of late), with new doeskin, and he had been watching her.

She scrutinised him from steady almond eyes, the eyes of the huntress, before the ancient face of the moon, all smokey intensity and the skittish mistrust one not used to gentle caress of family or a lover. He waited and listened to the laughter and squeals of children being wrangled together for bedtime.

Yeah okay.

And she lay on the velvet and silk quilt, and she toed off her sandals, and Neji was torn between watching the pink flush of her skin and all that he ached to call familiar, and the world of the byakugan, of black and white and strikes of light in the hidden rivers of her. She laughed as she turned to arrange the many over-stuffed pillows around her, motioning for him to sit at the foot of the elevated bed, curtained off from the rest of the quaint living space by heavy drapes, he knelt. 

She shimmied out of her pants and lay on her back, her white bindings wrapped mummy like around her hips and thighs, he could see clearly the mound of her pubis. He looked at her face and saw her unmoving but for the quirk of an expectant eyebrow, he whispered the activation of his sight and felt a rapid narrowing and expansion of his world. His solar eyes now turned to the cradle of her hips and he watched as she unwound her wrappings, like some wicked gift. For the first time he could look without restraint at the differences between them, the tangle of chakra between her hips was complex but as he saw her fingers move in deft caress, certain streams began to shift and re-organise to come together in a network like stars. All the points and the map itself undulated gently to the rock of her hips, blood pooled and flooded in the skin and muscle beneath her fingers.

He felt himself lightly caress the swollen network of tunnels around his eyes, sensitised at the strain of maintaining such intense focus. Tentens breathing quickened and the wet sounds in the room and the low pant from her opened mouth became hypnotic to him. Neji saw ripples travel from the base of her arched spine, lighting up in a great wave that washed over all the points inside her, branching out like lightning, her hips began to jolt with such ferocity he reached out to hold them down so he could see more clearly the movement inside her. His own breathing became strained, panting roughly with desire, hips flexing into unsatisfying air.

Neji had likened his own chakra pathways to tides, rivers and channels that diverted and waxed and waned, he knew these waters like they were actual physical places he had walked and seen and swam.

Tenten was like a night sky.

Points of light, some strong like bright stars, some faded and small with disuse or damage, but the vast inky blackness of her body housed so many nebula of whirling yellow light that he began to understand how it was she was always so far and flighty from him. Her heart chakra was solar, her spine an alignment of planets. Reaching to the milky way of her womb that lit up as she gasped out her pleasure, and he was blinded by her, and he knew the thrum of her blood, and he was a done for man.

**Author's Note:**

> I was on holiday in the middle of the bush, no internet or phone. So I entertained myself by writing this messy one-shot. I really think we got done dirty with Nejis death, and I always loved the idea of Tenten as a total outsider, and poor Neji as uber-repressed. Its rambley I know, please forgive that and the utter liberty taken with the Byakugan, Im not that deep into the details of Naruto anymore. Thoughts and critiques welcome! Thanks for reading lovelies.


End file.
